People are not property in an ethical sense. Self-ownership is a confused misnomer. The rights of personhood are categorically distinct from property rights over external objects.
This insane tendency to act as if property rights are axoimatic is philosophically absurd. One’s right to life and liberty is not an entailment of property rights! That has the formula backwards.
Homesteading principale dictates that if man is not utilizing the property then it has no owner. Therefore if you are stranded on an island ALL BY YOURSELF with your kids, then there is no property owner of that house.
Explain why they aren’t.
laughing man, when i leave my house in the morning to go to work squatters are not welcome to use my property in my absence…
I already have done so quite extensively. But if you want a recent summary of the argument against self-ownership: http://polycentricorder.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-i-reject-self-ownership-redux.html
of course ‘people’ arent property… peoples bodies on the other hand…
Yea, it’s called slavery. Ironically, the “self-ownership” myth logically entails slavery.
True but you are coming home. If you were to merely leave…then never come back then can you declare it is still your property? If so I would disagree.
Ok perhaps I should clarify my statement, you make a valid statement. A person’s body is their own to control and will.
Oh how excellently absurd, please spin this logic out for me. I am in rapture as to how you can rationalize this statement.
what?!, my person owning my body is slavery now,? what are you talking about?
This doesn’t follow, assuming a contract is a voluntary, chosen obligation. Of course, all contracts may be voided by the mere action or inaction by one or both parties, which is why repercussions are usually explicitly stated in the contract.
By making repercussion and restitution legitimate, you are implicitly recognizing that the act of absolving a contract or positive obligation is illegitimate in your system.
Is this particular caveat regarding contracts the only difference between the traditional libertarian concept of negative liberty and your amalgamation of negative and positive liberty?
Brainpolice, property is an ethical construct. I think you are unnecessarily obfuscating the issue with your unclear use of terminology. Property cannot not be ethically valuable. Perhaps you are referring to claims of property within a political system possibly being illegitimate, but once again that is not explicitly what you are stating.
A two fer one then. Excellent. [:)]
This is the cabin, just with different personalities and a slightly different emotional spin. The question you posed is loaded, so I would reframe it like this.
Does the father have a right to steal to save his children? Is it moral for him to steal so his children do not die?
I don’t believe he has a right to steal to save his children, that would mean stealing is always acceptable under duress. Is it moral? That entirely depends upon his morals. I like to adhere to the NAP, and aggression is not moral. Aggressing against the property of someone else can’t be justified.
So should he and his children die before aggressing? Sure. Or they could aggress and face the consequences in restitution/retribution. Certainly the father would be estopped from protesting any compensation due.
That was the debate with Danny. The aggressor (Klemm) was morally justified which meant no restitution for Tom. I was uncomfortable with Klemm claiming a right to aggression. I would hope you would be to.
I don’t recall if I used suppress, but I definitely meant reconcile emotion with reason. I might want to punch someone in the face in a fit of rage, but my better judgment can remind me of my morals (non-aggression) and the legal and moral consequences (estoppel) of doing so.
I don’t see how this is a problem. For example, I think I understand why emotionally we tend towards family, and am working on a notion to explain it from a rational standpoint. Emotion doesn’t have to be the enemy of reason, but when your emotions are irrational, you are going to have problems. The great thing about humans is, WE CAN RATIONALIZE ANYTHING! Racism, murder, slavery, theft, anger, envy, loathing, you name it, we can make it 100% certified A-OK!
When your emotions conflict with reason, I cannot understand how one is able to act emotionally and honestly.
I’m not an Objectivist, although Rand has had a profound influence on me, as she had on Ron Paul. Your particular values and ethics at times seem to be part of constructing a firewall for dealing with the world. Rand deals with this, asking the question, how can we care, but not succumb to the evils of collectivism? Why should we do anything good in a world where most people cannot understand the value of greatness? Why is altruism undesirable and irrational?
Well if you could actually respond in the first place it would make the discussion easier, but since you’d rather coerce people (?) seeing that’s your response this sentence of yours isn’t surprising.
Why doesn’t the father knock at the front door and ask for the bread?
So you like emotions. Good for you.
Again, good for you. Just don’t coerce anybody and this all seems fine and dandy. This is all so quaint fightin’ for people to know you have emotions, umm, I’ll whisper this to you… each human has feelings so your not saying anything outstanding here. Also the race issue is a social issue and so as long as you are not coercing anybody you make this social issue to be more than the event it needs be. It’s quite irrelevant in liberty.
And as long as you aren’t coercing anybody, then your sob story is merely an attempt to socially persuade as opposed to any lack of liberty. So go for it, but I don’t see anybody’s liberty at stake in your cry out that emotions are real and sometimes people don’t like another person cause of their skin color.
You said this:
But then you say this:
So I take it you are not against property rights your merely involved in an intellectual discussion on origins if you might say.
LS, I think the root of our disagreement is whether rights are absolute or not.
As I understand it, your position is based on the premise that rights are absolute, and so the cabin example has no intuitive strength and hence proves nothing.
My position uses the premise that attempts to justify absolute rights are unsuccessful; there’s no prima facie reason to think that rights are absolute. Therefore, the cabin example is intuitively appealing, and gives us a strong reason to believe the conclusion that rights are not absolute.
Is that a fair interpretation?
Brainpolice sometimes you seem to have it, and then other times you seem to fumble. This makes no sense. I am a slave of me. What’ll some people think of next.
Maybe its some Freudian logic, like the tyranny of self. The id being a slave to the ego and the super ego. I am a slave to my subconscious! Save me!